Takumi's Blog

I mean it’s been so good so far. People are cancelling arrangements they made with me, they’re ignoring my messages, and now I have no idea what to get my friends fro Christmas.

What are you getting your friends for christmas? Any last minute ideas? I leave for the US tomorrow morning, and I only have tonight to buy some presents and pack up…

SAT studying, Text-book buying, kanji tests… I can already tell this is going to be the best Christmas of my life

It’s cold outside, so everyone, family and friends are helping out and playing inside. The heater’s turned up to 72 degrees, and the turkey is nearly done.

The atmosphere is warm, everyone is in a loving mood and is excited to get started eating.

That’s what my normal thanksgiving day would have been like in America. With a week off of school and with family and friends around you. But in Japan, we do have a day off for thanksgiving, but no one really celebrates it.

Every culture has it’s own thing, but if Japan is going to make thanksgiving day a national holiday, I must say I’m disappointed. Everyone (except for those who lived in America) didn’t even know what it was. Nobody celebrated it. And it’s a national holiday! I can’t believe it.

Well, happy thanksgiving to everyone in America. Have a great night.

It’s not that often when I don’t feel like writing a post. I actually enjoy writing posts most of the time. But when I get really distracted, it’s hard to write about the things I bookmark just for a post!

Lately, I’ve been hooked on Dark Angel. I know, that TV show came out ages ago. But since I haven’t watched it before, I’m hooked on it now.

And plus, we all think Jessica Alba is hot
The storyline itself is pretty good, I think. Love watching these types of TV shows. You know, the spy/military/sci-fi type ones. But I guess everyone loves it a little bit huh?

I’m done with the first season, and I’m on episode 12 of the second season… Should be done with it this weekend, then I’ll be back to writing about my “oh so interesting” posts

Filesharing has always been useful. Now, when I say filesharing, I don’t mean bittorrent, or limewire. I mean network storage.

I don’t know if you remember, but a while ago I bought two new 500GB hard drives, and well, today I plugged ALL of my external hard drives into my makeshift server. (My OLD iBook G3 setup as a server).

And well, to my suprise, I have 1,648.07GB total storage, 683.69GB used, and 964.13GB free. (Only 41% of my total storage is used! (I used phpSysInfo to find out that info)

Just thought this was something cool that I found out today.

A blog with no posts is no fun. But… I guess I’ll have to explain why I wasn’t here for a week.

I was on a school trip, with my class. And we visited Nagasaki, Osaka, and Kyoto. Well, it was pretty fun. I always have bad karma on school trips (always get myself into trouble), so that part wasn’t too good.

But, guess what. I’m 17!

Pretty boring huh. Do you remember that age when you stopped feeling that “I’m a year older!” feeling? For me that happened a long time ago. During my 11th birthday all I cared about was my friends coming over and hanging out with me for the night. I didn’t really feel any older.

Well, I just got back today from the trip, and I’m exhausted. You should check out my Flickr photos, I’ll have some pics from the trip up there tonight.

Steve Jobs is my inspiration. He’s changed the world. Literally.

Every now and then, I find it hard to keep up doing work, going to school, etc. It happens to you too right? What do you do to get that motivation back, to want to keep doing better?

Everyone has been through hard times in their lives, and so have I. I used to use it to keep myself motivated, it worked for the 1st and 2nd year, but after that, you loose sight of what you used to have in mind. You really do.

Since Steve Jobs’ commencement speech at Stanford in 2005, I’ve been using that as my source. For those of you who haven’t heard/read it, here are some links.

I recommend everyone to at least listen to it once. It’s a great speech, very inspiring.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

-Steve Jobs

That’s just one paragraph out of the whole speech. Pretty good huh? Listen to it for more!

For the past week it’s been raining nearly everyday. But today in particular, it rained VERY hard. So much rain that this parking lot by my school’s train station was practically 4 inches in water! It’s supposed to rain harder tonight… I am sure glad to be home now.

When I saw the parking lot I first thought “dang, I wish I had my camera”… because I had left it at home. But I used my cell phone instead… The picture isn’t actually that bad, it takes a 1280×960 shot, and then I cropped it a little. But at least it helps describe what I saw.

Sony cut the prices by 20% in Japan for the PS3. I’m excited, but I’m not going to be getting one any time soon.

I have an xbox and a ps2. And until Halo 3 comes out I have no intention of getting a xbox 360. Until a decent first person shooter comes out with a good storyline for the PS platform, I doubt I’ll be getting a PS 3 anytime soon.

One feature I really am interested in is Blue-Ray. But I think the whole HD media thing is going to take a couple years before it becomes mainstream…. So I’m waiting on that for now.

For the last 3 weeks we had some studen teachers from the Gakugei University be our teachers. Personally, I think they did a much better job than most of our normal teachers, and I was able to pay attention better.

I don’t think it’s because they were ‘guests’ and it would be rude to sleep or anything. But more because their teaching habits haven’t become dull. Most of the teachers in Japan just lecture, nearly no groupwork! (Same with the student teachers, but it was different).

Hope they turn into good teachers in the future.

Skype has come a long way, leading the public into internet telephony. But I’m a little dissappointed with my audio quality. It seems whenever I dial a real number, the other person can hear me, but every other second they cut out and I can’t hear a single word they are saying!

So, I’m thinking maybe it’s just Skype for Mac. And if that’s the case, I really want to get this cool Wi-Fi phone by Belkin. Looks cool, and it will work with my wi-fi network, which is a plus since I don’t have to plug it into my computer to use it. (Or… they could just make the software work better on Mac’s!)

meebo is a Web 2.0 site/app for sure. It is an IM client, that is web-based, and is compatible with nearly any IM network out there (AIM, ICQ, Google Talk, MSN, Yahoo, etc.).

It features the very basics: Buddylist editing, chatting, chatrooms, logging, and multiple sign-on. I spend at least 5 hrs every week on meebo, and love it. I love logs. I don’t know why, it just sounds cool that everything I do is being recorded somewhere where I can look back and be like “wow, those days were fun”.

The first day of the Gakuensai today…. It was SOOO hot. Our year is doing a haunted house, so all the doors and windows are taped shut to make the room dark right? And well, we have these costumes on and it’s HOT HOT HOT HOT HOT!!!! I was like dehydrated sooo bad. The haunted house got about 100 people….. which is good, i think…

And now I’m really tired…  I just wanted to give whoever reads this an update on that. More tomorrow!

I’ve been semi-busy lately with on-goings at school. We got 11 transfer students into our grade, (all of them girls), and then for the first three weeks of this trimester we will have student-teachers be teachers.

Well, they are students from the Gakugei University, training to be teachers… Anyways, I think that’s pretty cool, and I think most of them are easier to understand than the teachers teaching the subject themselves!

The school is also giving us time off friday to finish getting ready for the school-hosted festival this weekend. It’s something all school’s do, and it’s called Gakusai (i think).

So yeah, preperations, preperations, preperations…

imeem is a social networking site, just like MySpace. Well, I shouldn’t put it on the same level as MySpace. I mean, let’s admit it, the original idea for MySpace might have been good, but it’s a lot different from that now, and plainly, it sucks.

imeem is much better than that. The site design itself is clean, and easy to use. The advertisments are not a nuisance, and are tolerable. And the features the it provides and the community there are friendly and awsome.

Video, audio, photos, communities, forums, all available online. There’s even a program you can download and view imeem from.

The program is actually quite thoughtful. It lets you login to your other IM accounts (AIM, MSN, GTalk, etc.) and manage everything related to your account from the program too. Although the Mac version still has a ways to go, it’s looking like a great start.

imeem > myspace